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Five days ago we have finally made it to Bolivia after a 10 hour coach journey from Salta to La Quaica, a night wandering the streets of La Quaica's spooky nabourhood in search of a bed, a night watching American Pie 2 (I'm sure you're proud Dad) in a deserted hostel, a hectic border crossing and then a 4 hour bus journey from the border to Tupiza, which involved a packed bus (on which we luckily managed to get seats) driving us bumpy dirt paths to our current altitude of 3160m.
This altitude would soon become the downfall of Charles who has altitude sickness and has spent the majority of the last five days in bed or more often the toilet! Charles was lucky though as one of the hostel workers was more than happy to be Charles nurse bringing him regular cups of coca tea and on one occasion take him to the doctors and translating for him. Which included embarressing moments such as he had to explain to her the colour of his poo! This service however was not free of charge as she in exchange pested Charles and asked him all about the royal family, after all his name is Charles and he is from England.
Meanwhile... I was out about in the town checking out the lively markets, endulging in the cheap food and drink and watching the sunset from the towns viewpoint after a small trek up a local mountain.
A remarkable turn of events has taken place in the last couple of days... Charles on more than one occasion has SHARED FOOD with me! This outlined the seriousness of his condition as in all the years of knowing Charles this has never been even joked about!
Yesterday, Charles recovered to an extent that he would leave the hostel without carrying a roll of toilet roll so we decided to do the horse riding we had put off for the last four days due to Charles illness. Our fears that our lack of horse riding experince would result in only a brief hospital visit if we were lucky were almost confirmed when an eight year boy arrived at the hostel and we were informed he was our guide! We couldn't believe this so we just assumed that his father would be round the corner with the horses, how wrong we were...just another boy around 10. Neither of which spoke any English! We mounted the horse and then we were off, both holding on for our dear lives! We both had some edgy moments but none more so than when my horse decided it was hungry and walked under some branches forgetting I was on its back to eat the undergrowth leaving me to get several cuts from the trees twigs and branches and almost falling. We did get more confident as the hours went by but the faster pace this has left our rears feeling very soar this morning!
Today we have decided to leave Tupiza on a four day tour with the hostel to Solar de Uyuni (the worlds largest salt flat) visiting numerous lagoons and volcanoes on route!
Hope all is well back home!
Max x
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